Rob Lowe has been pissing off the status quo for more decades than Justin Bieber has been alive, so it makes perfect sense that he would come out swinging when it comes to the snot-nosed Beebs. Recently, he gave an interview where he shared Bieber's "deep, dark secret" -- that his fans don't care about his music!

According to E! News, the former star of The West Wing, and a former member of the Brat Pack, sat down with Oprah Prime to discuss how much life has changed since he went to rehab and married the love of his life, makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff, in 1991. During the interview, he talked about the current travails of the Canadian pop star -- and sometime Selena Gomez paramour -- and said that he felt sympathy towards him, because he's been there before.

"I have tremendous empathy," Lowe said of Bieber."He makes really good music, he does, but I think he knows the dark secret, and the dark secret is 80 percent of his audience doesn't give a s--t about the music. And he knows it. It bums him out. They care about lemming-think, and their girlfriends and who's oohing and aahing and screaming. It has nothing to do with what he's doing as an artist. He is the guy who is standing in front at a moment that they're going through a developmental thing. It's natural, it's all great, but if it wasn't him, it would be somebody else, like it was me."

Lowe certainly isn't wrong in this line of thinking. According to The New York Daily News, Lowe -- who came under a world of fire when a sex tape of him with a teenager in the early 1990s came to light; this was, of course, right before he married Sheryl -- has been there, done that, and bought the proverbial 90-days-sober coin. Born into a broken home, he spiraled downward into a world of drinking, drugs, and partying at the height of his fame, but credits rehab for getting him on the straight-and-narrow... insinuating that it certainly wouldn't hurt Bieber none if he did the same for himself.

"I couldn't have gotten sober without rehab because I needed the science. I needed to (learn about) addiction and what it does to your body and all of the research and the things like that," he said.